Yarraville will have its pop-up park back this summer after traders stepped in to save the popular initiative.
The Weekly last week reported hundreds of residents and traders had attended a passionate protest in front of the Sun Theatre, demanding Maribyrnong council return the park for a third year.
The council has baulked at spending the requested $115,000 on setting up the park in Ballarat Street but traders have stepped into the breach, promising a pared-back park in time for Christmas.
The park and a ‘Summer Sun’ program would remain in place until the 2014 Yarraville Festival on February 16.
PICTURE GALLERY: Yarraville pop-up park protest
RELATED: Caning for council over stance
Sun Theatre’s Michael Smith and Kris Jansson have been spearheading the proposal, announced today.
Ms Jansson said a committee will work on getting the park up within three weeks, with the backing of sponsorship and community involvement.
“This has all happened very quickly. At the moment the Sun Bookshop and the Sun Theatre are the key players but we’re hoping to get everyone involved,” she said.
“It will be a program aimed at families essentially, some fitness things, live music, book readings, things like that.”
Ms Jansson said despite pockets of disapproval, the project had overwhelming public and trader support.
“We’ve had people coming in every day asking when it was going to be back, so we knew it was something people wanted.
“We had the petition, we had the rally which was really well supported and people have offered if there is anything they can do to make it happen let’s make it happen, so we’ve tried to find a way to do that.”
Maribyrnong mayor Grant Miles said the council was impressed by the passion of the community and the initiative shown to get the park off the ground for another summer without relying on ratepayer funds.
“It’s now being taken on by local traders and the community, we feel it’s a great outcome for Maribyrnong Council and the ratepayers in particular, with the traders taking on ownership,” he said.
“It’s a win for the ratepayers, it’s a win for the Yarraville community and we’re very excited to see that we’re going to have the Summer Sun program right here in Ballarat Street this summer.”
Cr Miles said the key differences would be the shorter timeframe and the move to make the park alcohol-free.
He said this would make it more family-friendly and allay some of the concerns of other traders based away from the park area.
“They see it as a compromise, obviously they thought they were losing trade with the pop-up park program in the past, but the main thing that is going to allay those concerns is no alcohol.”
The council will provide support through actions such as waste collection but will save its funds for the West Footscray pop-up parklets, due to run from this month until March.
“We stress that people from Yarraville can go over to West Footscray and enjoy the pop-up park this summer there, we would like to do everything we can to ensure that’s a success as well,” Cr Miles said.
“West Footscray will get in first and be open a bit longer, it will be a much longer program and we feel we’ve given west Footscray a great opportunity to succeed.”
An online Change.org petition supporting the park’s permanent return to Yarraville has attracted 1650 signatures.
Cr Miles said his personal belief is the park should be a permanent feature of Ballarat Street.
“We’re looking at the whole Yarraville precinct, looking at things like traffic flow and pedestrian flow over the railway and car parking. It’s all got to be looked in conjunction with the whole which takes a little bit longer, but I absolutely think this should be made permanent at some stage in the future.”
